Atheism

I attended a lecture that gave some food for thought. The topic was "Who wrote the Bible, or why I am an atheist!" The lecture focused on Christianity, however, the same questions can be posed to other religions as well.

Some interesting questions were posed:

• Who wrote the original text of the Bible? Were they divinely inspired?
• How do you account for the loss of some biblical stories, that were once passed in the oral tradition but are now lost and forgotten, and never recorded?
• Is the translation of the dead sea scrolls (the very first "originating" documents of biblical stories) true and accurate? - dead sea scrolls have no vowels, no standard spelling, no punctuation, and no spacing and paragraphing between words and sentences. So who decided how to space out the words, and what the words were?
  
• Who edited the different versions of the Bible and the testaments? Did they have an agenda? Were the editors divinely inspired?
• Why is religion so hateful? That is, it pegs people against one another. Men vs. women (think witch hunts). Hetrosexuals vs gays. Races against races.
• Why is it always "join us, or die?"
• Why is fear such a big component of religion?
  
• If you remove yourself from a religious context, and look at religion as an outsider you would need to examine it as a sociological and anthropological perspective. What is the purpose of religion in society - example: What economic role does it have in society? How does it help to establish order in society?
  

In any case, if you are Christian, and having trouble thinking about these questions from a more objective point of view... think of Scientology, then ask yourselves these same questions.

I can truly say that I am agnostic, in which I mean I do not believe in a specific religious doctrine - in fact I am against religious indoctrination. However, I do believe in spirituality, and that humans can be spiritual.

Because I am a literature nut, and because I am interested in literature, I think of books from a book history point of view - who wrote it, who edited it, what was the original like, in what context was the book written etc.. From my point of view, holy texts are historical documents. And because of it's history (or age), it's relevance is very removed from today's culture. It has failed to evolve to engage today's audience, and perhaps that's why there are so many questions about it, in this century.